As we have gone over in at least a measure of detail, an important key to understanding the importance of our involvement is to understand that we are and must be considered as first causes of our intents, both in initial belief and faith as well as in works of righteousness subsequent to the born again experience. If the element of being a first cause is abridged or lost, determinism lies at the door and responsibility for ones intents is destroyed. When responsibility is destroyed, morality and all moral desserts of punishment or rewards is lost. To punish or reward one in a moral sense that is not a first cause of their intents and subsequent action is to throw justice, reason and the testimony of Scripture to the wind.
Scripture is clear. Man is both responsible to God antecedent to salvation and subsequent to salvation. Moral sanctions apply to all moral agents regardless of pre or post the salvation experience. Man, as a believer is fully responsible to God for forming intents, free from coercion or force, in accordance to benevolence, and as such is the first cause of pre and post salvation intents, intents formed of and by ones own volition although influenced clearly by the Holy Spirit both before and after.
God’s influences, in areas where moral blame or praise is involved and directly predicated of ones intents, is always a passive influence upon the will of man. Man is no robot. He was and remains, if in fact he remains as a moral agent, the first cause of his intents, and as such properly responsible to God for them, and as such a proper recepient of God's punishments or rewards .
